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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392114">What comes up (must come down)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>13 Reasons Why (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drug Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Prostitution, Unhealthy Relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:56:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,537</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26392114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven missing scenes from the world's worst frienship.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Justin Foley &amp; Bryce Walker, can be read as Justin/Bryce</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What comes up (must come down)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from X Ambassadors' song "nervous"</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>1.</p><p>Children could be cruel; this Justin had learned early on. What he also learned was that adults weren't much better when it came to caring about what happened behind closed doors, what happened to nobodies like him.</p><p>Commercials from SPCC, tired social workers and well-meaning substitute teachers aside, everyone seemed to accept, in a fundamental way, that him turning up to school with bruises and unwashed clothes was the norm, something to shake your head at and call teacher-parent meetings over, only to promptly give up on the whole thing when said parent refused to turn up.</p><p>After all, adults were just grown-up children, and despite all their efforts to appear understanding and caring, they had all given up on Justin as soon as they laid eyes on him, as soon as another boy had picked on him in second grade and Justin had punched him straight on the nose.</p><p>It's all well and good if you're the victim, if you come to school and cry in the bathroom stalls and you get bullied by bigger kids and you don't fight back. But Justin wasn't a victim. He hit back twice as hard, and he had a mean way with his words, and no respect for authority whatsoever. He wasn't one of those helpless kids in the commercials, cowering under furniture and crying their eyes out watching their parents fight, he was a mangy stray, a pariah, and nobody ever stood up for him, nobody dared.</p><p>Nobody but Bryce Walker.</p><p>Bryce was a wolf amongst sheep, but he didn't bother wearing a sheep's clothing. He was rich and popular and everything that Justin could never be, and he wasn't afraid of Justin's pariah status; he was too rich to need other kids' approval. He had walked up to Justin that day and he had never left his side since, gifting him a new chance, a new identity, a new life.</p><p>Justin had found himself, just because of a child’s whim, accepted into a house so huge and white he first thought that was what heaven must look like, he never went another day without lunch, never had to wear worn and stained clothes to school anymore, all for being in Bryce's good graces.</p><p>Justin wasn't stupid, he knew that eventually there was going to be a price to pay, it was how the world worked. He had told Bryce as much when his parents first got Justin a new outfit.</p><p>“What do you want in exchange?” he had asked warily.</p><p>“All I want is a friend” Bryce replied, and smiled in a way that for once looked as if he wasn't using it to charm his way out of a lie.</p><p> </p><p>2.</p><p>Bryce poured two generous glasses of wine, putting one in front of Justin, who at the moment was busy rolling a joint one-handed while distractedly keeping his Need for Speed car from crashing with the other.</p><p>“Dude!” Justin said, looking at the glass, his wide smile giving away how high he already was. “What the fuck is <em>that</em>?”</p><p>“It's wine, you dipshit. Good wine. Probably cost more than your apartment”</p><p>Justin laughed, almost tearing up. He never got offended when he was drunk or high, he was finally able to take a joke.</p><p>“Oh, you shouldn't have” Justin said with a feminine affectation, licking the joint and sealing it before downing the wine in one go. “When did you start drinking wine, then?”</p><p>Bryce shrugged. “We need to celebrate, right? Goodbye Crestview middle school, hello Liberty. Finally some <em>fucking </em>fun.”</p><p>Justin snorted, lighting the spliff while his Lambo crashed into a wall and the word “wrecked” appeared above it. “Fuck” Justin said, taking a drag and turning to blow the smoke on Bryce's face. Bryce retaliated by stealing the joint.</p><p>“Why, isn't this fun?” Justin said, somewhat ironically, gesturing to the TV and the bag of weed and the wine dregs.</p><p>“I'm talking a different kind of fun” Bryce said, taking a drag for himself, feeling the unfiltered smoke go down his lungs warm and thick like fog.</p><p>“Girls at Liberty are easy. All you need is a football jersey and a big dick.”</p><p>“Well, if you play it right at the try-outs you might have one out of two.”</p><p>Bryce snorted, ruffling Justin's hair and pinching his cheek. Rationally he knew it was a dumb fucking joke, and it didn't hold any bite, but still some dark part of him didn't like when Justin talked back like that, when he questioned Bryce's masculinity, his authority.</p><p>He loved Justin like a brother, but sometimes it would have been nice if the other boy showed some goddamn <em>gratitude</em>.</p><p>Bryce pushed those thoughts aside, taking another drag, letting the weed relax him, make him lighter, kinder, more forgiving.</p><p>“We're going to be kings of that fucking school” he said, looking at Justin with his biggest smile.</p><p>Oblivious to Bryce's inner turmoil, Justin poured a fresh measure of wine in his glass.</p><p>“I'll drink to that” he said, smiling the kind of relaxed, genuine smile he only did when he was out of it, when he stopped being a whiny, sullen little bitch and became fun Justin, the boy with ovestylized hair and zero cares that the people at school knew and loved.</p><p>Bryce raised his glass, thinking of how the two of them would fuck every girl in the school, win every game, thinking of how much he loved Justin, how much he cared for him, how far Justin had come from the outcast he had been in elementary school and how much Bryce had helped him become who he was.</p><p>Bryce felt himself getting hard. He told himself it was the prospect of future lays that aroused him. He knew it wasn't.</p><p> </p><p>3.</p><p>The football field smelled of freshly cut grass and morning dew. It was so early that the sun was still hiding behind the bleachers, leaving the boys standing in a depressing kind of semi-dusk.</p><p>Justin was thrumming with energy, the adrenaline enough to drown out everything else. Bryce and Zach were arguing about some useless shit just beside him, but he was too terrified to pay them any mind.</p><p>He felt like if he were to get distracted he would lose his grip on the pain that was threatening to consume his diaphragm and his spleen and whatever the fuck was down there anyway, which had been threatening to border on unbearable ever since they'd started running around the fucking field.</p><p>He wanted this, wanted it more than anything, but there were only so many times you could tell yourself <em>mind over matter</em> without it becoming a useless, empty phrase that started bouncing around your head like a magic ball without doing anything to help.</p><p>“Alright boys” coach Willis said, walking up to where they stood in a messy line. “I've seen some very good performances, some others...less good” he said, training his gaze on Justin.</p><p>Justin clenched his teeth, looking down.</p><p>“I'd like to see some of you try for linemen now. Anyone?”</p><p>A few hands shot up, but Justin took a step forward without even looking at them.</p><p>“Mr Foley!” the coach said, looking surprised and vaguely annoyed. “By all means” he gestured to a padded sled a few feet away.</p><p>Justin stalked forward, ignoring the comments and looks of the other freshmen, assuming a three-point stance and looking ahead at the weight.</p><p>He felt the adrenaline consume him, drown out the pain, as he made believe that it wasn't a plastic and foam rubber doll that he was facing, but a hateful opponent, someone he wanted to cripple, to kill. One of his mom's various asshole boyfriends, the one that made him sleep outside when he was twelve, the one that once put his cigarette out on Justin's arm for no apparent reason, but most of all the one that gave him the bruises that right now were cutting off his breath, keeping him from giving this his all.</p><p>He exploded from his stance suddenly and effectively, blood pumping so hard in his veins that it drowned out the pain. He hit the sled at full speed, head-on, falling and scraping his knee but recuperating fast enough not to land on his face.</p><p>When Justin looked up, he saw that the sled had been pushed several feet away from where he had stopped, and he turned in time to catch Bryce giving him an “atta boy” smirk, slapping Zach's shoulder and starting to clap, followed by most of the boys.</p><p>Coach Willis approached him with newfound interest in his eyes, and helped him to his feet.</p><p>“Not too shabby, Foley” he said, gripping his shoulder.</p><p>Justin knew he wouldn't make offense, but that didn't matter. The pain from his busted ribs felt almost good now that the sun was finally coming up from behind the bleachers, immersing the football field in a warm light that promised a beautiful day ahead.</p><p>For a moment, Justin didn't think about having to go back home, or next week's math test that he would inevitably fail. For a moment he was young and alive, and the future didn't feel like such a bad notion.</p><p> </p><p>4.</p><p>It was a school night, and Bryce had been drinking, and the knowledge of Justin hiding away in his pool house, refusing to speak to him, was driving him insane.</p><p>Bryce wasn't a monster, he loved and bled and hurt just like everyone else, and it was hurting him to see his best friend, his brother, waste away like that.</p><p>What he couldn't understand, though, was why Justin was staying in his house, eating his food, smoking his weed, when he couldn't bear to look Bryce in the eye, couldn't stand being in the same room as him.</p><p>If his girl had been so important to him, if what Bryce had done was so horrible, so unforgivable, why hadn't Justin just punched him, faced up to him in any way, man to man? Justin was usually never afraid to pick a fight, so what the fuck had made him into such a little bitch?</p><p>And if he truly needed Bryce so much that he was willing to roll over any time Bryce put his foot down, why did he still have that defiance about him, that resentment?</p><p>Surely he'd have to pick one or the other at some point.</p><p>But Bryce was tired of waiting for Justin to make up his mind, and his patience and magnanimity had a limit, after all. It was a school night, and Bryce had been drinking, and he couldn't stand the silence of his house anymore.</p><p>He picked up the scotch and he made his way out of the darkened rooms of the mansion, out back towards the pool house. He wasn't drunk yet, but the amount of alcohol in his system was definitively enough to call for some bad choices.</p><p>Bryce opened the door without knocking because fuck it, it was his property. He looked around, at first failing to see Justin where he was slumped against the far wall, hugging his knees like a distressed child.</p><p>Justin made no move to get up when their eyes locked, simply extending his legs and letting his head fall back into the wall with an exasperated sigh. </p><p>“What do you want, Bryce?” he said, but without any real emotion behind it, he just sounded tired, or maybe high.</p><p>He looked so much younger, too, hair a curly mess that fell into his eyes, a striped sweater that made him look different, melancholic, frail. Bryce wasn't used to seeing him like this, and it took him a while to stop staring.</p><p>“Dude, it's my house.” Bryce said, closing the door behind himself and going to sit down on the couch. He put the scotch down on the table in front of him. “I come bearing gifts”</p><p>Justin stood slowly, coming to sit on the couch next to Bryce.</p><p>“What were you doing on the floor, anyway? You know we allow pets on the furniture”</p><p>A pause followed, then Justin turned to look at him with pure anger written all over his face. Bryce barely had the time to brace himself before the other boy was on him, seizing his shirt collar and shoving him backwards. Normally Justin wouldn't have been a match for him, but the element of surprise and of Bryce's intoxication allowed him to overpower the taller boy and knock him off the couch.</p><p>Bryce landed hard on his ass and stayed there, slightly dazed. He looked up at Justin in disbelief, then started laughing. “Bro, you really need to relax. Jesus, it was only a joke!”</p><p>Justin looked at him with helpless anger, and Bryce watched amusedly as the other boy struggled to bring his emotions back under control. It was clear he was itching for a fight, but it was also clear that he didn't dare start one, that he needed Bryce too much to burn this last bridge. Suddenly, Bryce felt a dark urge make its way up within himself, an urge to do something <em>mean,</em> to test this precarious arrangement.</p><p>“Well, come on, Justy” he said, standing, assuming a confrontational stance, arms crossed and head tilted ironically. “Do you have something to say to me?”</p><p>Justin stayed where he was, looking up with simmering anger in his stormy blue eyes, but eventually averting his gaze.</p><p>“Didn't think so. You put on this pathetic bad boy act, but we both know what you really are, don't we Justy?”</p><p>
  <em>You'd be nothing without me. I own you. </em>
</p><p>Justin seemed torn apart between the urge to fight back and the knowledge that he would lose everything if he did. The latter seemed to prevail, as he buried his face in his hands, fingers tugging spasmodically at his hair. Bryce felt that dark feeling leave him as the boy let out a choked sob, and he lowered himself on the couch next to Justin.</p><p>“It's alright” Bryce said rubbing soothing circles on his back.</p><p>“I fucking hate you” Justin said, voice thick with repressed emotion, but without leaning away from Bryce.</p><p> </p><p>5.</p><p>The first month he spent on the streets in Oakland, Justin felt like he was dying every day. The nights were cold, the food was never enough, the drugs helped him, marginally drowned out his misery, but he couldn't always be high. Morphine and oxy were too expensive, and he refused to turn to crack, knowing how quickly it fucked people up, how his mom had been when she was smoking it.</p><p>During those long, black pauses between highs, Justin toyed with the idea of going back. Getting down on his knees in front of Seth, begging him <em>please</em>, I won't bother you, just let me stay. If he grovelled enough Seth would have let him, Justin was sure of it.</p><p>He thought about showing up at Zach's, at Alex's, letting their parents see him in all his wretchedness, all his desperation. They would have helped, they were <em>good people</em>, worried citizens, loving parents. His friends would have given him all the help he needed, if he played his cards right, if he manipulated them the right way, like the filthy junkie he was, leeching off them like he had done his whole life.</p><p>Mostly though he thought about Bryce, about what they once had.</p><p>Bryce would have taken him back without asking any questions, like he always did. He would've been happy with Justin being as broken and weak as he was, as easy to control. He would have loved the fact that after everything Justin still crawled back to him, unable to make it without him.</p><p>On his darkest moments, Justin walked to a payphone and dialled Bryce's number, the only one he had ever bothered to learn, finger on the last digit, aching to hear Bryce's voice, his self-assured certainty. Bryce would tell him to <em>come back home, buddy, what are you doing out there? </em>Justin knew that if he heard those words, his resolve would crumble like a house of cards.</p><p>Thankfully his self-hatred was enough to keep him from pressing that last number.</p><p>Then, after a few weeks of barely surviving each day, Justin had started shooting heroin, and he had found a source of income in getting on his knees for other junkies and dealers, and his life had become bearable. He was never really sober, and the shit he was forced to do was nothing compared to the high that came after.</p><p>He knew after blowing the first guy for smack, though, this was it. There was no going back. Before he had entertained the thought of going back, but that ship had now sailed. He had debased himself completely, totally, there was nothing left for him to drag back home to his friends.</p><p>Justin Foley, football star, boyfriend to Jessica Davis, friend to Bryce Walker, was no more.</p><p>All that was left of him was loose feelings, like random shit thrown in a bag, need, pain, nausea, regret, bliss, hunger, cold. He wasn't a person anymore, he was just something to be fucked and thrown away, and afterwards if he still breathed, still felt all those things, it was nobody's business but the heroin's, until that became the thing that killed him, like it inevitably would be.</p><p>What was there left? Just a body, a shell, a puppet with cut strings. Maybe if Jessica saw him like this she would see. She would understand that he could have never protected her, because he was unable to protect himself.</p><p>
  <em>I want you to know what being raped is like, but I wish you never do.</em>
</p><p>Except Justin already knew, he knew better than she ever could, he thought selfishly, spitefully. Jessica had had sixteen years where she had been a whole person, blissfully unaware of what the feeling of unwanted hands on her skin felt like, of never feeling okay in her own skin.</p><p>Justin had exactly five years of that.</p><p>There was something worse than rape in what he was letting those men do to him, but Justin didn't care. They hadn't broken him, because he'd never been whole. Justin didn't care, and Justin wasn't Justin anymore, and that's what he told the child with haunted eyes that his mind conjured up at times.</p><p>Times when he was pinned on a dirty mattress with a guy fucking carelessly into him, pulling on his too-long hair, calling him slurs and pressing his hand on Justin's mouth, making him feel like he was about to die; that five year old would look at him with his dead, judgemental eyes, and he would tell him <em>this is all your fault. </em></p><p><em>I'm not you anymore</em>, Justin would answer, even as tears would threaten to pour down his cheeks. <em>I don't care. I'm nothing anymore. I don't care.</em></p><p><em>You're something</em>, the child would say.</p><p>
  <em>You're afraid.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>6.</p><p>The last time Bryce sees Justin, the other boy is sitting in the alley behind Monet's, smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone.</p><p>When he sees Bryce approach, he hangs up, saying a quick “I love you” before pocketing the phone, looking up at Bryce with a look between annoyance and resignation.</p><p>“So you and Jess are back together?”</p><p>Justin shrugs, taking a last drag from the cigarette before flicking it away.</p><p>“What do you care?” he says dully, after a long pause, as if he had wanted to say something else but he hadn’t felt Bryce was worth it.</p><p>“I don't” Bryce answers. “It's great for you, though. Personally I can't seem to find myself a girl who won't run away screaming once she finds out who I am, so...”</p><p>Justin snorts, looking up at him with contempt. “That sucks, bro. Can't think of a single reason why they'd do that.”</p><p>Bryce takes the poisonous comment in stride, unwilling to end the conversation before it even started.</p><p>“I was getting so desperate that I started visiting a whore. Real nice girl, too, has a house and everything, not one of those raccoons in fishnets you get out in Oakland.”</p><p>Justin stiffens suddenly, as if he'd been struck, clenching his jaw and getting a sudden, steely hardness in his eyes. Bryce pauses, sensing he's struck a nerve. Fuck, but Justy had gotten touchy. Monty had told him about it, how he went back to dating Jessica and all of a sudden had become a snowflake, all of a sudden he'll look a you with indignation anytime you suggest a girl is easy, he'll shut down any derogatory language, any regular locker room behavior.</p><p>“What are you doing here, Bryce?”</p><p>“I was just passing. I wanted to talk to you.”</p><p>Justin sighs, getting another cigarette from the crumpled pack and lighting it. “Talk about what?”</p><p>“I just wanted to clear the air. You're important to me, and I don't wanna lose you, man.”</p><p>Justin looks at him as if Bryce just told him he had been kidnapped by aliens. “You already have lost me, though” he says slowly.</p><p>Bryce pauses, fighting against the side of him that's itching to call Justin out on his ungrateful behavior, choking down the words <em>you're too good for me but you're not too good for my money </em>before they make it out of his mouth.</p><p>“Justy...” he trails off, as the other boy keeps smoking, looking in front of himself as if his gaze could pass clean though Bryce. “All I'm asking for here is another chance. After all I've done for you in the past, and in the last few weeks, I think I deserve at least that.”</p><p>“No, Bryce” Justin says, and his tone is surprisingly harsh. “You don't <em>deserve</em> anything. You're not entitled to any of my emotions, they're my own to have. If I decide I’m not going to forgive you, that's my right. And if you one day manage to accept that people’s lives are not yours to control, maybe you'll go through some real change.”</p><p>“Sure.” Bryce says, a red hot swell of rage rising in his chest.</p><p>“But you have to admit that I've showed you I care. After all we've been through, I was still the one to bail you out when you got arrested, to settle your shit with Seth.”</p><p>Justin’s expression is unreadable, so Bryce keeps talking.</p><p>“And you know why that is? Because no matter how great your new friends are, you'll always be too afraid to lose them to ask for their help when you really need it. You don't have to be afraid with me. I already know everything there is to know about you.”</p><p>Justin digs the heel of the hand that's not holding the cigarette into his eyes, sighing again. “You don't know everything.” He murmurs bitterly. Then he looks up at Bryce with a steady, unwavering set to his clear blue eyes that speaks of a change deeper than Bryce could understand.</p><p>“Bryce, you’re... I'm fucked up, but there's something seriously wrong with you. I don't want you in my life anymore, period. Nothing that you can say or do will make what you did right.”</p><p>Bryce closes his eyes, fights back the urge to shout, to break shit, focusing on his breathing like his therapist taught him.</p><p>“So all I did, it didn't count for anything?”</p><p>“I'm grateful for what you did, for what you’ve always done for me.” Justin says, and Bryce opens his eyes to see Justin was smiling feebly. “But you're not good for me. I can't go back to pretending that what you did didn't happen.”</p><p>
  <em>Would you listen to him, he sounds like a scorned woman on some reality program.</em>
</p><p>But Bryce suddenly realizes there's no talking to him. His oldest childhood friend, his best buddy, and he's gone beyond repair.</p><p><em>What do you feel? </em>His therapist would ask.</p><p>
  <em>I feel fucking cheated out of thousands of dollars. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bryce. What do you really feel? </em>
</p><p>Bryce looks down at the cigarette strewn pavement.</p><p>He feels goddamn sad.</p><p>“Well, I guess I better go, then.” He says, bitter and out of bargaining chips. He turns around, walking towards the street.</p><p>“Bryce” Justin calls, and he stops and turns.</p><p>Justin is watching him with a strange look, something between sadness and some other big emotion, and for a moment Bryce could swear he's going to cry.</p><p>“I tapered off the pills like you said. I'm clean.”</p><p>Bryce nods, hesitant. “That's good”.</p><p>“Yeah”</p><p>Bryce stands there as Justin gathers his stuff and goes back inside. Then he turns and makes his way towards his car.</p><p> </p><p>7. </p><p>Justin stood in the middle of the football field, chest heaving with barely contained sobs.</p><p><em>Bryce is dead. </em>He doesn't know if it's pain or relief that he's shaking with.</p><p>It's almost funny that he ran out here to be left alone, in the most exposed place of the whole school, but the green expanse of it, stupid as it may sound, was to him always a refuge, a promise for more, better, brighter.</p><p>He’d always known he wouldn't get a scholarship out of football, or basketball for that matter, but playing made him feel alive, it made him feel his own age instead of a fraud, instead of a junkie, a pariah, a whore; someone who had no business being in high school.</p><p>As soon as he stepped foot on a football field he was brought back to that suburban peace, the childhood that didn't quite belong to him but Bryce had shared with him all the same, the bright horizon in that rising morning of the try-outs, his freshman year.</p><p>Justin felt his breath level out, as he finally made his peace with the sea of emotions that he previously couldn't accept were his. But nobody else needed to understand, it was something between him and Bryce, and those feelings were as dead and cold as Bryce himself. Maybe he could make peace with a dead man, even if he couldn't have done so had Bryce lived.</p><p>He could hear Clay make his way towards him with his endearing cluelessness working at full speed, his world of blacks and whites, of loving parents and backpacks thrown onto unmade beds. Justin was part of that world now, but he could never be as certain as Clay, as sure of his own identity, of his own worth, of right and wrong.</p><p>But slowly, slowly, Justin found that he could take off that old mask, the one that Bryce had put there, and he could see that underneath it he wasn't just a bag of random emotions thrown together as he had once believed, that maybe that mask wasn't covering up a complete train wreck. That maybe he had managed to drag something of himself back to the people he loved, after all, and he could get better for them.</p><p>Justin wasn't prepared to deal with Clay, he could never explain it to him, but he felt like he and Bryce had reached an agreement, an even ground. He turned his back on his memories and stood facing his brother.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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